The campsite was full last night of South West Coast path walkers, many wanting to chat about their experience.  So, after packing up the bell tent and imparting advise to a delightful young guy walking anti-clockwise (strange!), we drive the short distance to Appledore for the last walk of our holiday.

We are parked up and ready to go before 9, as we have two timescales to meet – the first ferry back over the river Torridge and a football match (apologies I think it was a World Cup match but it doesn’t interest me) to get back home for this evening. It’s the nicest day of our trip – little white clouds floating in the pale blue sky, the sun glinting on the low tide in the river as boats wallow in sands.

The footpath takes us slightly inland around the disused boat building area to the working Harland and Wolff yard and on to a narrow path and boardwalk to the water’s edge.  Many old rusting hulls are leaning sideways in the sands, anchor ropes holding them in place.  You wonder how long ago any of these left the harbour? It’s a delightful walk up the river Torridge estuary, fields of barley (or some other crop?) inland, narrow paths through woodland edges and the occasional property with pretty gardens to admire. I particularly like the golden shades of a spiky conifer in one garden.

The properties get smaller and the pathways more trodden as we walk under the modern Torridge Bridge into the outskirts of Bideford. Send a photo of Torridge Council’s Riverbank House to a friend who recently had an interview there.

The path comes out onto a more modern dock area where the steamship  SS Freshspring has been moored since 2016 and carefully brought back to life. Wow what an achievement. We are ready for breakfast so find a café near the older Bideford Long Bridge, order a sausage sandwich and enjoy the view of the harbour joined by a seagull, dipping is beak into his soft downy feathers while he awaits his breakfast morsel.

The coast path crosses the long bridge, one of the longest mediaeval bridges in England, built in the 13^th century, to East-the-Water. Good name! Here we walk along the road for a bit, stopping briefly to admire the gravestones poking in all directions above long grasses in the disused East-The-Water cemetery, cars and lorries rushing past on the busy main road.  We cross the road and discover the formal path of the Tarka Trail into Instow.

We’ve been warned by previous walkers that this is a long boring trail but this first section has delightful views looking back across the, now filling, estuary to Harland & Wolff’s Appledore yard.  From here you can truly see the scale of the shipbuilding yard and its 180-metre dry dock.

We hurry along the path, admiring the Instow signal box, and are just in time for the 11:50 ferry back to our car.  With a heavy heart I settle into the car for the long journey back to East Sussex, where our home sits in the beautiful countryside not far from Batemans’, Rudyard Kipling’s home.